Sandy Rivers explores moral injury in recovery: the pain of violating one's values, being harmed by others, and facing impossible choices. She shows how hearing moral grievances without judgment can open a path toward responsibility, acceptance, reconciliation, and change.

John Makohen argues that lived experience is not a soft extra in addiction counseling—it is a skill set. Drawing from homelessness, heroin use, and sex work, he explains how lived experience builds trust, reads risk, and guides clients, while demanding supervision, disclosure training, career paths, and equal pay.

William Stauffer asks why addiction systems settle for keeping people alive but languishing. Drawing on William White’s work, he calls for recovery-oriented systems that support meaning, purpose, belonging, contribution, and each person’s capacity to flourish.